Windows networking problem

[Jim S.]

I recently bought a wireless network adapter for my desktop system and tried to set up an ad-hoc network with my laptop according to the directions at Making the Wireless Home Network Connection in Windows XP Without a Router

It sounds simple enough. But even though I enabled sharing of my desktop's internet connection (which is via ethernet to a DSL modem/router), the laptop couldn't access the internet. It connected to the desktop and got an IP address, and I could access shared folders on the desktop, but that's all.

I haven't figured that problem out yet, but now I discovered another one. Whenever network connecting sharing is enabled on the desktop, the laptop can't see any of the desktop's shared folders, when I drop the wireless connection and plug it back into the ethernet like it used to be. It can't even see that the desktop is on the LAN as far as Windows resource sharing is concerned, although it can ping it. However, the desktop can see shared folders on the laptop! If I disable network connection sharing, everything works again. But this, obviously, still leaves me with no clue on how to share the internet connection.

Does anyone have any suggestions for either of these problems?

 

[hendrix04]

I am not on an XP box at the moment so i dont know where everything is, but in add remove programs you can go into windows apps and you need IIS's internet connection sharing turned on... also you need to make sure the 2 network adapters are bridged.

Also, even with sharing turned on you actually have to share folders. It doesn't automatically share your entire computer.

 

[JAG72]

Your best solution to share your internet is to go out and buy a cheap router to do this for you. This way you can have the desktop turned off if you would like and the laptop would still be able to access it fine.

 

[Jim S.]

I did get internet access from the laptop working. It turns out I had to set the gateway address to the IP address of the wireless adapter in the desktop. I had been setting it to the address of my DSL modem/router just like I did for wireless connections, but apparently Windows wasn't routing the DNS requests or something.

I never got file sharing working satisfactorily. To reiterate, file sharing works over the wireless connection. It works over the wired connection when I don't have internet connection sharing enabled. When I do, the client can't see the server.

I'll probably give up and buy a wireless router. They're a lot cheaper than I thought they were. I used to be able to set up a properly routed ethernet by hand, but Windows hides the details with its GUI. That would be fine if the GUI did everything for you the right way, but as evidenced by my experience it apparently leaves a lot to be tweaked if you're trying to do anything non-trivial.